I think the bigger lesson from TGI Friday’s is not how the loyalty program was presented, but that the loyalty program actually has value to the customer.

Before becoming a personal trainer, I worked at a restaurant where the servers had to push the loyalty program on the guests. Unlike TGI Friday’s, there were few, if any, benefits to joining the program (for example, you would get an e-mail if a new restaurant was opening). There were no fun events or coupons or anything worth getting. As you can imagine, it was very difficult to get people to join the program. A lot of servers lied to guests (saying they could win a prize or something like that) or wrote in names of their friends and families. While it did always help to give as many pens as cards to fill out, clear benefits to joining would have made the program more successful for the restaurant .

I think that both stories you told (Disney and Blank) point in the same direction: you MUST care for your customers!

Whether something has gone wrong or not, we (customers) just want a bit of attention. Regardless of how you (company) will handle the problem you might have caused us, we just want to know that you LISTENED to our complains, and that you CARE about them.

Oh, and your tips about websites reading patterns are awsome!

Best regards, Rodolfo.

You truly do get it! You are an entrepreneur!

I love hearing positive stories like yours about how people have implemented the PRINCIPLES that they’ve learned from watching the show. Thanks so much for sharing what you did.

I applaud your success, you deserve every bit of it, and the way you launched your rewards program was perfect. I’m sure that most of your employees will be keen to be part of it.

You clearly understand that no business achieves anything great unless there’s massive action on a continual basis. Every business, including mine needs to make constant improvement in order to grow long-term.

Regards

Andrew

I wanted to post a comment in support of your reply, and the replies from others, to Bob’s post. I find your stories about your experiences with various companies INCREDIBLY helpful. I’m sure the majority of your loyal viewers ‘get it’ and understand these stories serve as ‘real life’ examples of ‘marketing is everything’.

In fact, as a result of your Delta Airlines story, where you were sent coupons from Delta to distribute when you noticed a ‘job well done’, I went out and purchased $500 worth of $25 gift cards from Starbucks, Wolf Camera & Chipotle to distribute to my team of photographers when they recieve a favorable testimonial from a client. At our annual BBQ gathering I read testimonials I’ve recieved over the years and gave each photograher their first gift card to announce the new program.

I find the lessons from your program very helpful and I’m thankful I don’t need to pay a subscription to watch ‘Help My Business Sucks’ . . . so, please keep the great ideas coming and thank your sponsors for allowing your programming to be free!!

Mark